Interaction among bio-oil model components during oxidative degradation

• The oxidative degradation behaviors of model components from bio-oil and the evolved gas products were analyzed.
• Interactions among model components were evaluated by the experimental and calculated TG-DTG curves, FT-IR and TG-MS curves overlap ratio.
• Interactions may lead to generate the nonvolatile component, polymers and char.
• Interactions are mainly from the reactions among aromatic substances, anhydrosugar and its disintegrating products.

The oxidative degradation behavior and interactions of three model components (eugenol, vanillic aldehyde and levoglucosan) which are model of three classes of components, namely phenols, aromatic aldehydes and carbohydrate) in bio-oil were investigated by TG-FTIR and TG-MS analysis. TG-DTG profiles showed that the phenols had the greatest tendency to oxidative degradation, followed by aromatic aldehyde and carbohydrate. Volatilization and thermal oxidation are the main steps during eugenol and vanillin degradation. The TG-FTIR-MS results reveal that the interactions among three model components lead to mixture degrade at a higher temperature but completely oxidize at a lower temperature. The interactions may well be the reactions among aromatic substances, anhydrosugar and its disintegrating products to form nonvolatile component, polymers and char. The model compound oxidative degradation kinetic analysis data shows that the value of activation energy corresponds to the sequence of model compound oxidative degradation. Which also indicate the interactions among disintegrating products have effect on the mixture oxidative degradation and give rise to generation char.